Haunting the stars: Poltergeists to the rich and famous.
Bob Hoskins puts his Hollywood success down to the night he saw a ghost. He was working as a porter in London’s Covent Garden at the time he saw the apparition of a Benedictine nun. An unknown and struggling actor, he was moonlighting to earn extra money. “I was down in the cellar at the time when on the wall appeared a woman’s face. She was wearing a nun’s habit and reaching out to me with hands turned upwards. She spoke but I couldn’t tell what she said. Later I learned that Covent Garden was once called Convent Garden and was owned by the Benedictines of Westminster. The story was that whoever saw the nun’s face would have a very lucky life from that day on.” Hoskins, who went on to star in The Long Good Friday, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Mona Lisa, attributes his success to the ghostly apparition. “I got the courage to pursue my acting and I have been luckier than anyone I know.”
Miriam Karlin, star of the popular BBC1 comedy So Haunt Me, reveals in a new book about ghosts that she is being haunted in real life – by the spirit of her dead father, Harry. Miriam, who plays Jewish ghost Yetta Feldman, believes her father’s ghost takes her over when she has to speak publicly. She explains: “I do a lot of public speaking and the words just seem to pour out of me from nowhere. Now I belive that they come from my late father, who was a brilliant barrister. He had a magic way with words, he was far more articulate than I am. He feeds me my lines, I’m convinced. I just open my mouth and great speeches come out of me.
The 66-year-old actress, who first found fame in the Sixties comedy The Rag Trade, also believes her sleep is disturbed by paranormal premonitions. “One day in 1975 I distinctly heard the sound of my father having a terrible coughing fit, even though he wasn’t with me or anywhere near me. The next day my mum told me that he’d been taken ill at that exact moment. He died the following year.”
In 1969 she dreamed she was at an airport begging travellers not to board a plane. The next morning she read that a Boeing en route from Karachi had crashed in freezing fog miles short of its destination at Gatwick Airport, killing 50 people. “I have never been to Karachi but I bet I could describe the place down to the finest detail because of this dream. Whenever I have such dreams, I wake up in a sweat and sit bolt upright in bed, hugging my shoulders.”
Singing star Patti Boulaye had a ghostly experience in London’s Old Vic Theatre last year, shortly before taking over the lead role in the award-winning musical Carmen Jones. As she watched the show from one of the theatre’s private boxes, she felt a chilling draught, as if the door had been opened and someone had entered the box. I turned around, but there was nobody else there. I was so shaken I told the company manager – and he started chuckling. “Oh that’s probably our ghost,” he said, as calmly as if he was discussing the milkman.” The spirit of the Old Vic is believed to be the ghost of its Thirties boss Lillian Bayliss.
Jim Davidson, host of BBC1’s Big Break, faced his ghostly encounter when he shared a home with a girlfriend in London’s Old Kent Road. The 38-year-old comedian, who now lives with third wife Tracey in Ewhurst, Surrey, said at first he didn’t believe rumours that the flat was haunted by an Irishwoman murdered in the house years before. “We’d just be getting off to sleep when we would hear banging and clattering downstairs in the kitchen. That would be followed by a loud banging noise on our bedroom door which would sometimes go on all night long. Yet whenever I got up the courage to look, there would be no one there. One night when we were watching television in the sitting room, we saw illuminated crucifixes floating around the room. I was petrified and we moved out the next day.”
Actress June Brown, who plays busybody Dot Cotton in EastEnders, reported a supernatural experience when strolling with a friend. June (62) said: “It was a bright, sunny afternoon and my friend Stephanie and I decided to take a walk together. Later that evening I was doing a stage play in Stratford Upon Avon. We came upon an old, abandoned single-track railway line. In the distance we could see the opening to a tunnel and decided to investigate. We walked and walked, getting deeper and deeper into the blackness of the tunnel, but no matter how far we went we could see no light or sign of light coming up in the distance. It was as if the tunnel had no end.
“I was gripped by an inexplicable fear. I turned to my friend and said: “I don’t know why but I have this feeling that if we go any farther, we shall never return. When she told me she had just had the exact same thought, we both turned around and started to run back. The next day we returned to the same spot to look at the tunnel. But it had vanished. It was as if it had simply never been there at all!”
Rock star Sting could hear every breath he was taking when a poltergeist sent a razor sharp carving knife flying across his kitchen. The millionaire singer and actor, who was staying at his house in Hampstead, North London, said: “It propelled itself over the room and embedded itself into a wall. A few nights later, I woke from a deep sleep and across my room I saw a misty figure dressed in Victorian clothes: she was staring straight at me. I assumed it was my wife (Trudie Styler) and said: “What are you doing over there? Then Trudie sat up in bed next to me and asked: “Who are you talking to?”
“I pointed to the lady across the room and Trudie saw her too. Neither of us panicked. We just stared at her in silence and held each other tight. The room suddenly went icy cold and the Victorian lady began to fade away. We never saw her again.”
In October 1991, Princess Dian’s ancestral home was exorcised after the family became convinced that the ghost of her grandfather Jack was affecting the health of her father, Earl Spencer. The Earl’s condition began deteriorating after a stroke, so his wife Raine called in a clergyman to drive Jack’s spirit from 16th-century Althorp House near Northampton. Diana’s brother Charles revealed that a Church of England vicar performed the ancient exorcism ritual in secret. The stately home was temporarily “cleansed of evil” and the Earl recovered. But the ghost was seen again just weeks before Earl Spencer died from a heart attack last year. Charles said: “The exorcism was to get rid of my grandfather. His ghost was seen as a negative force which might have something to do with my father’s illness.”
Irish Independent, 27th February 1993.